Entries in world
(182)

The Life Expectancy at Birth infographic by designer Marcelo Duhalde from Muscat, Oman is a fantastic data visualization of the current life expectancies by country if you were born 2013.

Average number of years to be lived by a group of people born last year (2013) if mortality at each age remains constant in the future. The entry includes total population of both male and female components.

From a design perspective, this infographic tells one story really well. The infographic focuses on communicating one set of data effectively (lifespan) without complicating the design with additional extraneous information. The overall design is very attractive, and grabs the audience’s attention with a big, central visual element. The curving bars are unusual, but have the benefit of condensing the early years so they take less space in the overall design.

At the macro level, it’s obvious there is a big difference between the various countries and continents. The readers are drawn in to compare the details of the different countries they are familiar with. Usually starting with where you live, and then looking to see which countries fare better or worse than your location. Of course the data represents a massive generalization of millions of people, but does tell a great story at that higher level.

The design looks like it’s perfectly sized to be printed as a poster, but I couldn’t find any mention of one. The sources could definitely be more specific than just listing the top level sites that data was gathered from, and the URL to the infographic landing page on Visualizing.org should have been included in the footer information.

The best test scores don’t always mean the happiest kids at school. The Best Schools and the Happiest Kids visualizes the results from a worldwide survey of over 500,000 15-year-olds globally.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s triennial international survey compared test scores from 65 countries. Happiness was ranked based on the percentage of students who agreed or disagreed with the statement “I feel happy at school.” Test scores were ranked based on the combined individual rankings of the students’ math, reading, and science scores.

I can’t tell for sure, but it appears that Jake Levy, Data Analyst at BuzzFeed created this data visualization based on the data from OECD survey results. Infographics like these often get shared without the rest of the article, so it’s important to include all of the necessary framing information in the graphics itself. Title, descriptive text, sources, URL, publishing company, copyright, etc.

As today marks the start of the TBEX European Conference – the world’s largest gathering of travel bloggers, writers and new media content creators – we thought we would celebrate their choice of Dublin as this years’ venue with an infographic profile of the modern travel blogger.

Today and tomorrow, Dublin will play host to scores of travel bloggers and writers, but what makes a contemporary travel blogger? It’s an interesting and pertinent question – it’s a demanding occupation (albeit a fun one!) and one that requires a huge amount of hard work, dedication and the potential of not making a huge amount of money, at least in the formative years.

So what’s the average profile of the modern travel blogger? How old are they? What countries do they visit? How do they monetise their writing and what contemporary technology do they utilise to facilitate their writing? To answer these questions and numerous others, we completed an in-depth survey of travel bloggers, giving us some revealing and unique insights into what makes up a travel blogger.

Rather than present all our finding in a page of text, we thought we’d turn them into a far more eye-catching format, so here’s our infographic profile of the modern travel blogger:

The design is clean with a great color palette. It’s easy for readers to look through the information quickly.

A few of the statistics are shown in text only, while others are visualized. The stats in text only will be perceived as less important by readers, and I don’t think that was the intent of the designers. If the data is important enough to include in the infographic, they should also be visualized.

To celebrate our new ski flights we produced a world ski calendar so you can ski all year round across the world. For each destination we have provided some interesting stats plus individual piste information. Let us know your favourite ski destination by commenting below!

Very cool report that uses data visualization and infographics design to communicate complex information about International Criminal Tribunals from the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School, New York City.

The Leitner Center launches a new report, “International Criminal Tribunals: A Visual Overview,” providing an introduction to the work of the international tribunals and the conflicts which led to their establishment. Despite widespread interest in these tribunals and the view that they represent a definitive advance of international law and justice, there is also much confusion and misconception about their work. This new 90-page report, providing analysis and information through written summaries and detailed visualizations, aims to make the work of the courts more accessible to the general public and legal professionals alike.

Media attention dedicated to the work of the tribunals is too often superficial, and tends to confuse key distinctions between them; more informed scholarship, on the other hand, is largely confined to specialty publications, remaining inaccessible to most. “International Criminal Tribunals: A Visual Overview,” aims to provide well-researched and accessible information for anyone wishing to more fully understand these issues. This will help democratize engagement with these courts, which are tasked with delivering justice for victims of some of the world’s worst atrocities. Examples of the visual graphics in the report are included below.

Awesome use of different styles of data visualization to summarize the often-complex information behind these tribunals. Timelines, maps, area charts, polar grids, rose diagrams and treemaps. The Case-by-Case timeline are fascinating.

I asked Daniel McLaughlin a few questions about the development and design of the report:

Cool Infographics: What software, websites or tools did you use to create the visualizations?

Daniel: We used Adobe Illustrator and InDesign to create the visuals for the report.

Cool Infographics: Did you create the report yourself, or use a design team?

Daniel: As a lawyer working with law students on this project, I was dependent on graphic and information design volunteers to create the visuals. The students and I carried out all the substantive research and then worked with these volunteers to figure out how best to translate it visually. Paula Airth of www.bepeculiar.com, in particular, was instrumental in bringing the project to life.

Cool Infographics: How long did the report take to design and put together?

Daniel: The report started out as a short (8-9 page) publication on the work of the international criminal tribunals. It grew into the present 90 page version as we continued to accumulate new data and the graphic/information design volunteers continued to create new graphics. All told, the research took around 4 months and the creation of the visuals/layout took another 5 months or so.

Cool Infographics: How has the use of data visualization design and social media impacted your marketing?

Daniel: The goal of this publication was to make the work of the international criminal tribunals more accessible to lawyers and non-lawyers alike. As indicated in the publication,

“There is wide awareness, though little true understanding, of the work of the international criminal tribunals. International prosecutions of high-ranking civilian and military leaders, including former heads of state, on charges of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide, represent for many the ultimate condemnation of these individuals’ past actions and a measure of their fall from power. Yet, despite the tribunals’ grasp on the popular imagination, they are the subject of significant misconceptions and confusion. Much of the media coverage dedicated to their work remains superficial, at best, and largely muddles over key distinctions between various tribunals, past and present. Conversely, the more informed scholarship is largely confined to specialty publications that remain inaccessible to most. In truth, many lawyers and non-lawyers alike lack a clear understanding of the role and functioning of these increasingly-pivotal international institutions. This publication seeks to redress this knowledge gap by providing well-researched and accessible information for those wishing to more fully understand the international criminal tribunals and the conflicts over which they have jurisdiction. An informed public is an engaged public - and the issues that animate these tribunals, including delivering justice for victims of some of the world’s worst atrocities, are too significant to be discussed solely by a small cadre of international criminal law specialists.

Notably, this publication was created in partnership with graphic and information designers so as to reach a broader public. The designers’ visualizations present information regarding the tribunals and their underlying conflicts in a direct and accessible manner to a wide range of viewers, including those without a legal background. Beyond this democratizing function, information visualization also serves to reveal important data and trends that might otherwise go unnoticed in a more conventional format. Ideally, the following information, which is current as of January 2013, would be integrated into a continually updated interactive webportal dedicated to engaging a global public on issues of international justice.

In sum, this publication aims to facilitate a broader discussion of the international criminal tribunals’ notable accomplishments, as well as ongoing shortcomings.”

Hotels.com has released the 2013 version of their Global Hotel Amenities Survey, summarized in the infographic What Guests Want. Part of an ongoing series from Hotels.com on their press site, the infographic takes a fun look at what hotel-stayers value most. Apparently everyone wants free WiFi!

You just checked into your favorite hotel and are ready to enjoy all it has to offer. What kind of amenities inspire you? We surveyed travelers from all over the world to see what perks they valued most when spending a night away from home.

How Far is it to Mars? by David Paliwoda is a fantastic animated, interactive infographic website that shows the viewer the scale of the distance to the Moon and to Mars as measured in pixels. David calls this a motion-infographic.

Simon Scarr is doing some great work as the Graphics Director at the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Last month he designed Close Encounters, the full-page visualization of the Near-Earth-Objects that have passed within the Moon’s orbit (or will pass by) from 1910-2189.

A 45-metre-wide asteroid came remarkably close to Earth on Friday, even closer than communication and weather satellites. It was be the nearest known close miss for an object of its size.

When this story was first mentioned in the newsroom, a few days before the incident, it sparked debate. People were intrigued as to how close these objects come to Earth. How many pass by? And how fast or large are they? A perfect opportunity for an interesting graphic.

As usual, NASA had every piece of information we needed. Their Near-Earth Object Program was established in 1998 to help coordinate, and provide a focal point for the study of comets and asteroids that can approach the Earth’s orbit. They have data sets on all close approaches to Earth since 1900 and projected forward to 2200.

This is a beautiful design that shows the distances to scale by placing them in between the Earth and the Moon, and the horizontal lines show the relative speeds of all the objects. Orange lines are future, predicted passes.

Simon has posted more behind the scenes information about putting this infographic design together on his own blog. I highly recommend the post, and you can check out his other work.

The USA is lucky to be in the top 5 countries that have annual renewable water resources. Because of this, we are very wasteful. This is considered to be “Water Rich”. For the countires that are considered Water Poor, they do not have the wasteful luxury, in fact 88% of fatal cases are due to inadequate water access. The Water Rich vs Water Poor infographic by seametrics.com tells the story of both water rich countries and water poor countries.

While some might say gold or diamonds, as far as human life goes, water is the world’s most precious commodity. As the world population increases, and industry continues to expand, Earth’s freshwater reserves are being stretched dangerously thin. See the disparity in water consumption between wealthy and underdeveloped nations.

This is a good side-by-side comparison design, that has a lot of information. Maybe too much information, because it can be overwhelming to readers.

Thanks to Ngoc for sending in the link!

Side note: There are only 5 DAYS LEFT to participate in the Cool Infographics Start 2013 Clean charity drive! If you are able, please visit our campaign on Charity:Water and donate to the cause of providing clear, drinkable water to everyone that needs it.